KNOWN AS FORGIVEN BY JESUS
John 8:2-11
IMAGINE: Being caught in a grievous transgression and brought before the Judge of the world.
If a man commits adultery with a
married woman – if he commits
adultery with his neighbor’s wife –
both the adulterer and the
adulteress must be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10
Then the scribes and the Pharisees
brought a woman caught in adultery,
making her stand in the center.
John 8:3
There is someone missing from this kangaroo court proceeding. The man! (Deut. 22:22). The Pharisees did not care anything about justice concerning this woman. She was simply brought before Jesus to trap Him. Since the man she was with was not brought before Him along with the woman, the possibility arises he was in on the set up with the Pharisees against Jesus.
The ploy here was to see if Jesus would have her put to death, defying Roman law, or let her go, thus rejecting the Law of Moses, and lose all credibility as to who He claimed to be. Roman law did not permit the Jews to carry out their own executions (Jn. 18:31), consequently, the religious leaders were sure they had Him this time.
But not so fast. What was He saying? Did he just say, “Stone her?” Yes, according to the Law of Moses. So, they could not get Him on that because He was now upholding the Law. The hitch came when he told the religious leaders that any one of them that had never sinned was to throw the first stone.
Jesus does something very interesting before and after He instructs the religious elite to stone her. He stoops down both times to write something in the dust. Scripture is silent as to what He was writing. There, of course, is much speculation concerning this event but, it comes down to, we just don’t know. There is, however, in Jeremiah a mention of writing in the dust:
Lord, the hope of Israel, all who abandon
You will be put to shame. All who turn
away from Me will be written in the
dirt, for they have abandoned the
fountain of living water, the Lord.
Jeremiah 17:13
Again, we have no way of knowing for sure what He wrote in the dirt. Possibly the first writings may have been the men’s names with the second writings being their sins, or vise-versa. Whatever He was writing got their attention to the point they started backing up and moving away.
It is interesting to note they started exiting with the oldest first moving down to the youngest. If Jesus was writing their names in the dirt this may have been the order He wrote in. This had been the order of sequence with Joseph when his brothers arrived in Egypt.
When Jesus stood up, He said to her,
“Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?”
John 8:10
Jesus had originally told the religious leaders that the one without sin could throw the first stone. The only one without sin in the crowd was Jesus, Himself, thus He could have thrown the first stone.
“No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Neither do I condemn you,”
said Jesus. “Go, and from now
on do not sin anymore.”
John 8:11
Jesus did not ignore nor condone the woman’s sin. He also did not condemn her as the self-righteous religious leaders had done. He forgives her for her sins with the instruction to “go and sin no more.”
According to Old Testament Law, only those who were not guilty of the same sin could participate in the punishment of the guilty. Before a rush to judgment of someone else’s sinful life style, a self-examination just might be required. As 1 John 2:2 speaks of Jesus:
He Himself is the propitiation
for our sins, and not only for
ours, but also for those
of the whole world.
This little lady isn’t the only one Jesus has caught in sin, is she? As He has forgiven us, we must also forgive others.
Something to consider:
Don’t judge someone just because
they sin differently than you.
Anonymous
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